Laws and Policies in Health and Social Care

This report discusses the failure of Staffordshire NHS and the development of health and social care policies by the legislative, executive, and judiciary branches. It also explores the impact of laws and regulations on organizations, including the need for a healthy working environment and data protection.

INTRODUCTION
Mid Staffordshire NHS trust was created in 1993, which was awarded as NHS foundation
trust status on 1st February 2008. Staffordshire NHS foundation trust is being managed by 2
hospital Stafford hospital and Cannock Chase hospital. In this report the failure of Staffordshire
hospital has been discussed which has resulted in large number of deaths. The laws and policy,
guidance, codes and practices of the judiciary, legislature and executive have been discussed.
There has been a comparison of national and organizational policy on the key legislation and
national policy of health and social care practices.
LO1
P1
Modern health care policy focus their attention to protect and promote the health of the
individuals and the community. These objective can be fulfilled by Staffordshire NHS
foundation trust respecting the human right. The government has separated the power into three
branches which are the legislative, an executive and the judiciary. The legislature is the most
suited branch for developing health policy as the legislature is thought to be impartial and
publicly accountable(Nelson and Staggers, 2016). Legislature are appropriate policy makers
because they have experience, and they can also collect information from a wide variety of
source, so the final decision in all the health and social care are made by the legislature. On the
other hand judiciary is considered to be the least ideal forum for the development of any health
and social care policies. This is because the judges rarely receive education in health and social
care issue as they are usually good at legal skills. Despite all these the courts have been
instrumental in developing several; important health care policies. These policies include the
field of mental health policy that shows judicial leadership followed by legislative enactment.
Then the executive branch of the government helps almost in the same way as legislature to
bring health and social care policies formation. The executive branch have many agencies to deal
with health and social policies and the staff working here are not connected with any political
parties and have brings knowledge and expertise of health care to form appropriate policies, and
so there decision can be trusted to go on with.

P2
Government has been formed by the legislation. The legislation also set the code of conduct
based on the parliament and sets the guidelines on how the employees at trust organization like
that of Staffordshire NHS should work to protect their patient. On the other hand the features of
statutory guidance includes the promotion of well being of the patient at Staffordshire NHS.
Staffordshire NHS must promote well being of their patient when carrying out their care and
support functions and they must operate the patient with at most safety as the patient safety must
not be compromised. Since Staffordshire NHS have compromised these safety measures this
gave resulted into more than 2000 deaths in just 3 years(Orthwein, 2017). The features of codes
of practices for Staffordshire NHS includes respect the laws and regulations of the country,
prevent any environmental pollutions, prevent any conflict of interest between staff members.
The code of conduct acts as a guidance for respecting human rights, different labor laws and
protecting the degradation of the environment.
M1
So this ensures that all the regulation in the country regarding the health and safety are being
followed by companies like Staffordshire NHS to control the increasing death rates. Lastly the
key features of national policies include the resourcing of health care services and setting of
performance indicators and evaluation criteria for trust like Staffordshire NHS.
D1
At the organizational level there are specific policy and procedures being set by them to for
standardization of their company's work(McLean, 2015).
LO2
P3
There are various laws rules and regulations that can impact the working of organization. In
these laws and rules a company must make sure that they make workers work on no hazardous
working conditions. So this regulation forces the health and safety care providers to treat their
employees with at most safety as if they don't then they might have to face serious penalties.
Another such act is Equality Act 2010 which help to deal with the anti discrimination legislation.
This acts protect the employees at work as well as the patient at different trust to be treated
equally in term of age, disability, gender, race, colour, nationality, religion and sex. The health
and safety care providers have to treat everyone with equality. The recruitment of any employees

must be based upon his qualifications and are of expertise and not on the basis of any factors
mentioned above and the patient should be treated on the basis of first come first serve basis or in
some cases in terms of severity, but never on the basis of the factors mentioned above. These
legislation acts protect these interest of the employees and patients.
P4
This is brief comparison between national and organizational policy and national professional
standards. National and organizational policy has developed a range of different areas of care
including the care of people of all ages and to acts as a guidelines for practitioners as well as they
also include setting specific policies and procedures at organizational level. In contrast to this
professional standards oversees the statutory bodies that regulates health and professional social
care over the countries. The professional standards are set for those organization that holds
voluntary registers. The national and organizational policies thinks to develop gradual but long
term changes for the heath and social care policies as it had to work all with all the states of the
country to change any legislation required although these changes once happened are for long
terms. These changes are difficult to establish in force and are not easily changeable so at most
care should be taken when dealing with them.
M2
On the other hand the professional bodies has a role in encouraging the upkeep of the standards
in practice that are not subject to regulations. They are committed to protect the public and
understand, monitor and control risk related to public manipulations by the providers of health
and social care. They inspire the public confidence, develop public knowledge about their rights
and regulations to help them provide with strong effective governance(Wolf, 2019).
D2
The organizational policies are specific it is possible to see whether they are being followed
based on which the effectiveness and impact can be seen. While professional standards manages
the complaints fairly and effectively. They ensure proper education and training programs are
being set for the practitioner to deal with all the health and safety rules and regulations.

LO3
P5
There are some national and international human right laws for the equal rights and it has been
advised that company must be involve in treating people right and fairly. . These human rights to
health means that everyone receiving the health care services and mental health care should be
treated with highest attainable standards. This includes proper food, sanitation, healthy working
conditions and a clean environment. These right ensures the health protection of all, health care
must be provided as a public good for all, financed publicly and equitably. There are
organization that are working to safeguard the employees and customers health at global level
like World Health Organization (WHO), these organization helps attain highest level of
standards of health as a fundamental right of every human being. These organizations create
legal obligations of healthcare to treat every patient with appropriate quality of
equipment’s(Martinez, 2015). These rights are being given to everyone without any
discrimination on the basis of religion, race, color etc., so that everyone who comes for a
treatment is considered equally, this is especially very helpful for the less advantageous
population.
M3
Certain analyses have shown that the there are various laws and rules that has implemented by
government so that they can enhance health outcome of people. It has made their lives better.
Another global organization working for the health and social care of human being is United
Nations.
D3
United Nations committees oversees the treaties made for the protection of human rights. In the
year 2000 UN committee have formed a human right to health on economic, social and cultural
issues.
P6
These are some of the laws in place by the government to safeguard the employees of the
organization.
HEALTH AND SAFETY LAW

The health and safety at work act has been implemented in the year 1974. In this law the
government has laid focus that safe and secure working conditions must be given to employees.
This will help the firm in growing and establishing their market share. In this they must make
sure that employees are not working in hazardous working conditions. This law includes
employer making sure that the work environment is safe and clean so that the employees does
not get sick. It is an employer’s duty to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health,
safety and welfare at work of all his employees.
THE PERSONAL PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT AT WORK REGULATIONS 1992
This act ensures that the employer provide personal protective equipment’s where there are risks
to health and safety that cannot be adequately controlled. These personal protective equipment’s
might include masks, goggles, helmets, gloves etc., which the employees must require and
cannot keep them with themselves during the working hours.
LO4
P7
EQUALITY ACT 2010
The equality act 2010 is a law came in force from October 2010 and protect people from being
discriminated on the basis of age, disability, gender, race, color, nationality, religion sex etc.,
and any discrimination on any if these basis may result in employees being demotivated to work
and start looking for new jobs and this may also result in organization paying large penalties.
DATA PROTECTION ACTS
These acts are being in place so that the data of the patients which may include their personal
details, data about their family etc., if these details are share this may be a threat for the patient
privacy.
P8
These are the impacts of the laws and regulations which have on the organization providing
health care and social services.
Avoid and mitigate unintended responses to policy changes(Banks, 2016).
The policies are being implemented by government so that they improve the efficiency of
employees. These laws and policies will also help them in increasing the productivity aspects. It
can help in growing. These laws attempt to reduce the chances of any unintended change which
might occur suddenly. (Fernando Chang-Muy and Congress, 2015).

Ensure data is protected
The data of the individual is kept protected as a result of these acts as the healthcare service
providers will be penalized if they leak any data of the patient resulting in data privacy breach.
The patient might also sue the organization for leaking its private information to others without
there consent which in turn affect the organization in dealing with courts and hiring lawyers etc.,
so these all factors will prevent the service provider not to leak any information.
M4.
Healthy working environment to work
these laws force the employees to provide a healthy environment in terms of sanitation, food etc.,
so that the employee health are not affected by any such hazardous conditions. These are the
basic needs of the employees which must be kept satisfied by the employer or this will in turn
affect the employer’s organization only as the number of leaves by the employees will increase
and the staff turnover too will increase.
CONCLUSION
In this report there has been a brief discussion about a trust named Staffordshire NHS and how
the legislative, executive and judiciary forms different health care and social care policies. Then
further the key aspects related to laws and regulations implemented by government has been
explained in report. These laws has supported individual in growing and increasing their
efficiency. Also when firm is following these rules, it has enhanced their goodwill. It has
supported firm in growing.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Banks, S., 2016. Everyday ethics in professional life: Social work as ethics work. Ethics and
Social Welfare, 10(1), pp.35-52.
Fernando Chang-Muy, J.D. and Congress, E.P. eds., 2015. Social work with immigrants and
refugees: Legal issues, clinical skills, and advocacy. Springer Publishing Company.
Harris, J. and White, V., 2018. A dictionary of social work and social care. Oxford University
Press.
Martinez, O., and et.al., 2015. Evaluating the impact of immigration policies on health status
among undocumented immigrants: a systematic review. Journal of immigrant and
minority health, 17(3), pp.947-970.
McLean, G., and et.al., 2015. General practice funding underpins the persistence of the inverse
care law: cross-sectional study in Scotland. Br J Gen Pract, 65(641), pp.e799-e805.
Nelson, R. and Staggers, N., 2016. Health Informatics-E-Book: An Interprofessional Approach.
Elsevier Health Sciences.
Orthwein, W.C., 2017. Psychiatric and mental health nursing: The craft of caring. CRC Press.
Sankar, P.L. and Parker, L.S., 2017. The Precision Medicine Initiative’s All of Us Research
Program: an agenda for research on its ethical, legal, and social issues. Genetics in
Medicine, 19(7), p.743.
Wolf, Z.R., 2019. The Right to a Caring Relationship.